I debated whether or not to write a post this week, but I figured that part of being a teacher is being honest about your own teaching practice. I can’t sugar coat everything and make postings that are all about my achievements in the classroom. Of course, I do want to highlight all of the amazing things that my students are doing in the classroom, but I would be doing a disservice to this blog space and to myself if I ignored the fact that there are hard days, and sometimes, hard weeks. This week has been a hard week.

Classroom management has been tough for me. There are days where I feel that I have progressed in this aspect. I certainly feel that I have learned a lot and improved in some areas of classroom management since the beginning of my long practicum. I have learned how to use a firm and loud voice. I have learned many different strategies to use in the classroom. But it’s the consistency that I am currently struggling with. I have to be more clear. I have to be more consistent. I have to set more consequences if students do not follow expectations. Those three things are the key aspects that I am missing in my classroom management. Knowing this, I have put a plan into place to help ensure that I meet all of these targets in the classroom. I definitely got a wake-up call this week and while it has been an emotional couple of days, I am determined now more than ever to finish off this 10-week practicum strong. I am determined to vastly improve my classroom management skills within the next two weeks so that I can feel at the very end that I have accomplished and understood the many facets of classroom management. I have all of the tools that I need in order to succeed in this. Now, it is about implementing it into my classroom.

3 more weeks. It’s really down to the wire now. I will admit – I may have planned a little too much to do for my practicum. I have had to cut out a lot of things from my units. The good thing is that the time crunch has allowed me to reflect on what is really important to teach to my students. Nonetheless, here is my reflection of this week.

We finished two major units, fairytales and plants! The students presented their fairytales to the class this week. They should be proud of what they have accomplished. Many groups worked really hard on their projects over the past two weeks. Next up – Aboriginal storytelling! I am quite excited to read to my students Aboriginal stories because they are so different and unique. My students are in for a treat!

To bridge my plants and patterns in the sky units, our class planted some Tomatosphere seeds! One packet of seeds are the “control” tomato seeds, the other seeds were sent to space/treated in space-like conditions. The trick is that we don’t know which is which! The students and I are excited to watch the two plants grow. Hopefully we’ll see some changes happening soon!

We also started our Community unit this week. Our class went to the Fire Hall near our school. The students learned about fire safety, fire trucks, and they even got to use a giant water hose! We started building parts of our community bulletin board in the classroom. The students went onto Kidpix during Computers this week and drew a picture of their house. We came back into the classroom and coloured them in! We’ll be working on our bulletin board over the next few weeks – adding roads, the school, the Fire Hall, and other buildings in our community!

Wow, did this week ever go by fast! Our week was jam-packed with many exciting events happening, including Mother’s Day art activities, school dances, and our school’s first ever Creativity Fair!

The Creativity Fair was a huge success. The goal for the school’s Creativity Fair was to build projects using recycled materials. For my class, I decided to give my students a theme to base their project around. Since we are studying Fairytales, I asked my students to build a house, which would be inspired by The Three Little Pigs story. I left the criteria very open yet I was still surprised by the variety of houses that came into the classroom on the day of the Creativity Fair. The students did an excellent job and were definitely creative in their projects. Many students put in special features in their houses, such as solar panels, a fish pond, a lookout base for the pigs, and gardens! In the afternoon, our class visited other classes to see their projects. The Grade 7s and 6s held an Entrepreneur Fair in the gym where they sold items made out of safe, recycled materials.

Besides all of the fun activities going on, this week, we have been focusing on SEL approaches in the classroom. As I mentioned last week, we introduced fidget toys. The fidget toys have been going well for the most part, though students do still need reminders of what the rules are when using them. I introduced Brain Breaks into the classroom this week! I made a Brain Break jar with some popsicle sticks that has some quick yet fun activities on them. I am slowly introducing the activities to the students. This week we did Simon Says and Mingle, Mingle, Group! I got all of my ideas from simply Googling Brain Breaks. I am hoping to incorporate a little bit of technology in the Brain Breaks as well, as I begin to get more into it.

Until next week.

5 weeks down, 5 more weeks to go. Where is the time going!? Wasn’t it just yesterday that I had just started my practicum? In any case, here is what happened during the last week.

This week has been a tough week. My students were chatty throughout the entire week, which really tested my classroom management skills. I am really trying hard at getting better in having that “wait” time and making sure that everyone is looking at me when I am giving new instructions during my lesson. This has been something that I have been working on since practicum started, and I do believe that I have made some progress in this area. Of course, there is more improvement that needs to be made.

For Fairytales, the students are continuing to work on their Fairytale projects. This week, we also learned all about plant parts, including the stem, leaves, and flower. We did the Celery Stem experiment and got to see how the celery stalks changed in colour when we put it in water with red food colouring. The students bean plants are really coming along as well!

I also got to experience my first field trip as a teacher, taking my class to the Honey Bee Center. The students got to learn about developmental stages of the honey bee, saw a real bee hive, and got to put on beekeeper clothes! Overall, the students really enjoyed the field trip. One student commented that it was the best field trip he has ever been to.

Our classroom has been working on SEL approaches to help our students focus and do their best learning. This week, we introduced fidget toys into the classroom. The students were (as expected) very excited about the fidget toys. We decided to slowly introduce the students to them, so we first started out with Playdough and bean bags for the students to utilize. We made sure to set the rules when using the fidget toys (i.e. it cannot be seen and you can’t make noise with it). It will be interesting to see how well the fidget toys will be used within the classroom.

Stay tuned for next week.